“The ways of presenting Mary in art change as society evolves,” says exhibition curator Timothy Verdun, and the human intimacy on display in the images, he adds, “convey to people that God gave such enormous value to every aspect of human life that he chose to share it.”

"I’ve been singing the Messiah for a long time, so it’s very familiar music to me. We do our rehearsals, and we also then reflect ourselves individually about what the music means to us," says Kenneth E. Chadwick, a member of the Fairlington United Methodist Church choir. "The singing is an important part of my experience of my faith."

"I put myself into their place. I would be in the same situation. I would be the one who escaped from the war, from this conflict, and they came here and you know Turkish hospitality," says Savas Metin, general secretary of the Turkish nongovernmental aid organization called Kimse Yok Mu. "They came to our country, and it is our duty to help them."

Sacred journeys, says author Bruce Feiler, are “this experience of trying to get closer to God. There is so much noise in our lives; sometimes in order to hear you have to step away from that ordinary life and open yourself to the extraordinary."

Watch more of our conversation with Bruce Feiler on his journey to Lourdes with wounded warriors, on pilgrimage as movement, and on the power of pilgrimage as “a walk that has been ground into the stones, the dirt, the path.”

"We lived our life feeling comfortable, in a way, with conflict. It was always there, so maybe we don’t know how it is to live without it," says Paula Gaviria of the Colombia Victims' Unit for Attention and Reparation. "Only people who have suffered conflict, like victims, are the ones that really know that peace needs to be made."

"We wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t going to be just another Hanukkah program," says Rabbi Burt Visotzky of the Jewish Theological Seminary. "We wanted it to be a mix. We wanted there to be music, we wanted there to be fun."

"We need to grow in understanding. We haven’t listened to the young people, churches included, and so when I say “listen” I really mean listen to the stories of the young people," says Lisa Sharon Harper of the Christian social action group Sojourners, "because they are ones bearing the brunt of most of the crisis we’re experiencing."

"East and West are not contradictory to each other. They are part of the same body,” says Metropolitan Elpidophoros, a bishop in the Greek Orthodox Church in Istanbul. “And in the last years, thank God, we have extremely good relations."

Young recruits to radical Islam “don’t have the knowledge base to fend off manipulation of the religion that these groups are doing to convince them this is the way they can be the best Muslims they can be,” says security studies professor Mia Bloom.

Since apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe first took place in 1531, she has been a companion throughout important events in Mexico’s national history, says Monsignor Jorge Antonio Palencia. “Our Lady has accompanied the nation across the foundation, through the independence movement, then through the revolution movement."

Listen to Imam Talib Shareef recite a portion of the salat, or prayer, at Washington National Cathedral, where on November 14 Muslim groups were invited to say their traditional Friday prayers. The cathedral has hosted Muslims at interfaith services in the past, but this service was the first time Muslims were invited to lead their own prayers at the cathedral.

“You have a generation that is saying we are tapping out of religion in many ways. But what they are not saying is that we are tapping out of a serious search for meaning in life,” says Erwin McManus, pastor and founder of MOSAIC church in Los Angeles. “If anything there is an incredible and profound hunger in millennials saying if there is something beyond this life I want to connect to it."

John Unger is simultaneously the pastor for three churches of three different Mainline Protestant denominations, and a state senator in West Virginia. “I’ll tell you that I can’t do it, not alone,” says Unger. “I recognize my limitations, but I believe that with God all things are possible.”

Watch excerpts from R&E’s interview with Matthew Vines, author of the book “God and the Gay Christian” and founder and president of the Reformation Project, an effort “to train Christians to support and affirm LGBT people.” On November 6-8, 2014, the project is holding its first regional training conference at National City Christian Church in Washington, DC.

A delegation of top Yazidi spiritual leaders is seeking help for their ancient religious minority in Iraq, which has been particularly targeted by ISIS. “We became victims of one of the largest…atrocities of the modern world,” says Yazidi human rights advocate Murad Ismael.

"My goal is to be present,” says this writer and spiritual teacher, to the “emotional reality” of Native Americans and “put it in the voices and characters of real people. My job is to present a truth that you will embrace more fully if you believe it as you read it."